Is being busy a good measure of your success levels?

As we meet and greet people in our travels what do people say when asked the question, How are you going?

A very common response is busy, haven’t got time to scratch myself or I’m flat out. Another common response is around never having enough hours in the day. But there is usually a follow up that follows and acknowledges that they like being busy.

Conditioning in our lives plays a big part of how we act and how we conduct our daily routine. How we interact with others and how we do business, accept friendship, receive reward for our services and bring up our children. How we were bought up is usually the way we act and lead our followers and siblings.

Conditioning is a powerful tool and isn’t always a good tool but it is real and a fact of life.
My point being the majority of us were conditioned to work hard and success will come to you. The harder you work, the more you do the better results you will get. Hence the busy disease we all seem to catch. In fact if we aren’t busy or seen to be busy we feel guilty. Sound familiar.

Remove yourself from the mental blueprint you have been embedded with as a child. Step outside of that if you can and look in at yourself and ask this simple question and don’t leave it until you get an answer. What are you busy doing? Is that busy-ness taking you to where you want to get to?

Getting the answer to this question will reveal that you are focusing on the little spot fires we can encounter on a daily basis that are demanding and need your attention aren’t taking you to you to the right destination. That is if you know the right destination – most people don’t. Sure you are busy but not in the right areas. You are caught up in the day to day and not thinking the bigger picture.

There is a great story the Washington Post ran on a social experiment they ran in a subway to see how many people would stop and take the time to listen to the world’s greatest musician. He played of an hour and only a handful of people stopped and listened to him and he had only $32 in his hat after that hour from passersby. The night before he packed a concert hall with people paying $200 a ticket to see him. You can read the story in full here

It was peak hour and people were on their way to work however it goes to highlight how one dimensional and blinkered we get when we perceive we are busy. Everyone is busy but is it on the right things.

Ponder this for the rest of the day or however long it takes and see what answer you come up with. When your time is up and you are laid to rest will you be remembered and acknowledged for your busy-ness? Is it what you want to be remembered for? If not what do you want people to say about you when you have gone, what mark do you want to leave on the world? If being busy is not helping you achieve this then you need to make some changes.

Being aware of it is a great start.